Automated payment terminals and/or automated teller machines typically include a banknote validator which examines the banknotes and provides an assessment of the validity of the banknotes. Certain banknotes are rejected when confirmation of the validity thereof has produced a negative result. Most banknote validators are designed to receive single banknote with the user appropriately feeding a further banknotes in a serial manner. For many applications, this is sufficient, however, there are circumstances where it is desirable to have a user insert a stack of banknotes with the device then feeding the banknotes in series through the validator.
Although the concept of feeding the top or bottom banknote from a banknote stack through a validator is straightforward, in actual practice, it is difficult to provide a device which avoids feeding of overlapped banknotes. As can be appreciated, the quality of the banknotes provided to the device by the user, varies considerably and this substantial variation in the quality presents further design challenges.
The present invention provides a banknote restricting drive which allows a stack of banknotes to be inputted into the device and the banknotes to be serially fed through an associated validator.